Welcome, colleagues, especially new faculty and staff. Let's all welcome our new colleagues.

To put things in perspective at the outset this morning, let me share with you the story of three boys talking in a school yard about their fathers, one of which is a poet, one a singer, and one a preacher. The first boy says, "my dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a poem, and they give him $50." The second boy says "big deal. My dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a song, and they give him $100." The third boy says, "I got you both beat. My dad scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, he calls it a sermon, and it takes eight people to collect all the money."

While this annual opportunity to share a few moments with you this morning is not intended to be a sermon. It is certainly not a poem or a song and, contrary to my reputation, we won't be taking up a collection! But there is much to share with you.

I lead with the old "What did you do over the summer?" Theme. To those of you who spent some time away this summer, I hope you came back well rested, up to speed in your discipline, and ready to tackle a new academic year. To those of you who were here, I know what many of you have been doing because the campus has been a busy place this summer. As for me, between enjoying some fiction by Pat Conroy and Nelson Demille, I read the book which Dr. Burch is circulating to many of us called "Educating Citizens: Preparing America's Undergraduates for Lives of Moral and Civic Responsibility." That book contains the essence of the remarks I shall make in a few minutes.

I spent some time this summer reflecting on our progress as a university, with particular reflection on what was a remarkable 2002-2003 year at Western. I thought about the Supreme Court decision on the University of Michigan affirmative action cases and talked with a number of colleagues about those cases. I also took some time to get up to speed with the significant efforts under way across our campus to prepare for our Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) accreditation and reaffirmation process, a three-year journey which is well under way.

Strategic plan
I want to begin with some thoughts about our campus strategic plan. The Challenging the Spirit WKU strategic plan continues to be a dynamic and evolving road map to measure our progress, guide us through our transformation as a university, and chart our collective futures in the life of Western Kentucky University. I know that many of you, when you get that e-mail from Jim Flynn about strategic plan updates, moan and wonder how could the time possibly have passed since I just did one of those? But the method we have created for ourselves is valid; it is easy for us to track internally and for our external stakeholders to follow. I won't take the time this morning to go through the various performance indicators and elements of the planning process; rather, let me talk philosophically for a moment about some perspectives, as I see them, which relate to our institutional plan. As you well know, the many initiatives included in our planning process affect the complex, yet delicate, balances in the life of a university.

I am often asked with all that we have going on at Western, "What are the university's priorities?" Those priorities, from my perspective, can be summed up in two overarching themes. The first is the urge I feel to ensure and enhance increasingly relevant academic programs. By enhance, I mean that I am consumed with finding ways to enhance your capacity as faculty and staff in your respective disciplines or job descriptions - enhanced compensation, enhanced money from public and private sources, enhanced capacity from state and federal governments, enhanced student support and scholarships, and enhanced physical surroundings. I cannot do much to enhance your specific academic or administrative activity, so what can I do to enhance your opportunities for success?

Relevancy to me means to focus on what we're doing to provide economic prosperity for our region, to help ensure a higher quality of life for those who live in this part of Kentucky, and to support the state's agenda for improved lives for Kentuckians. This, of course, causes me to focus more on some disciplines than others, and it causes me to elaborate a bit more on my philosophy of a comprehensive university, a philosophy which has shaped several of my comments this morning.

In my opinion, comprehensive universities are a new generation of land grant institutions, although my thinking is not shaped by some new piece of legislation out of Washington. There is an evolving responsibility for applied research at the undergraduate and master's level at comprehensive universities. More and more, we are becoming technology driven and new economy focused. We have a growing responsibility to identify and solve problems in our region, to help business and industry in our region address the challenges which affect all of our lives. I'll be working with Tom Layzell at CPE and the other presidents this year to help redefine the definition of the comprehensive university in Kentucky. Our language at Western will be distinctive, and it will be relevant. Many of you are driven by this yet unwritten but growing responsibility, particularly those of you in Ogden College of Science and Engineering, the College of Education and Behavioral Sciences, the new College of Health and Human Services, and our Gordon Ford College of Business. At the same time, however, some of the deepest impressions which our faculty leave with me on a daily basis come from our faculty in the liberal arts.

I read a great article in The New York Times this summer called Reconciling the Liberal Arts and the Bottom Line by Sara Rimer. In it she quoted James O. Freedman, the retired president of Dartmouth College, who has published a book which defends the relevance of the liberal arts in education. It made me think that the more I and other educators talk about applied research, the new economy, technology, and the practical elements of education - which, I believe, is fundamental to a comprehensive university - the more I find what we do in the liberal arts to be so important. Dr. Freedman reminded me, and I'm sure many other readers, that a "liberal education is what teaches people how to write and how to think and makes them much more valuable in the job market over a 40-year career, than graduates of a professional specific program. Employers will tell you they are seeking the flexibility of mind that a liberal education endues. Life is unpredictable and full of disappointment," Dr. Freedman writes, "the breakup of marriages, theft, death of loved ones, enduring illness. In such a world, how could one lead a real life? That is a question that a liberal education addresses," he says. That's why I sent a note to Dean Lee this summer wanting to learn more about how much we are requiring reading and writing skills across our curriculum and why I continue to create opportunities to learn more about what our faculty and students in English, history, theatre and dance, music, art, and communication are doing with their professional lives. I am impressed with the specific skills our students learn in English 100, 200, and 300. The more I know what you are doing, the more I can seek ways to enhance what you're doing and seek relevancy in what we as a university community are about.

The second theme which I describe for people when they ask about our priorities is the physical transformation of our campus. I know many of you think we're spending an awful lot of money on our buildings and grounds, and we are. Some of you perhaps think we're spending too much money. Frankly, however, I take some satisfaction when I can help change the cries among you related to facilities deterioration and unpleasant surroundings. Our physical environment is important, and it is changing for the better.

With all that we have done over the last few years and are doing at the present time, we still have, however, a very long way to go. I don't need to tell some of you that we still have at least three "sick" buildings. We still have deteriorated infrastructure in many of our buildings and classrooms. We still have outdated electrical systems, air handling units, roofs, and other key physical elements throughout this campus.

As I suggested a moment ago, there is not much I can do to help you teach and conduct research and public service in your discipline except strengthen your capacity to do so by improving your working environment. For as long as I am in this job (which, by the way, I hope is a very long time), I am going to do all I can to strengthen and improve this campus so that you have an enjoyable, pleasant, comfortable, and relevant place in which to work. I'm going to do all I can to help restore the architectural and structural integrity of this campus, to create new and renovated space, to address our deferred maintenance inventory, to address parking and transportation needs, to improve our classrooms, and create smart classrooms and to address our equipment needs - from our residence halls to our laboratories. And if the time ever comes when we have more money than we need and our buildings and grounds need no more attention, then maybe I can redefine this job. Frankly, however, I see that taking at least the rest of my professional career, and even then I expect my successor will wonder what we were doing for the last 15 or 20 years.

Enhanced and increasingly relevant academic programs and physical transformation of the campus- everything else we are doing is a means to these two ends.

One last thought about our strategic plan. Think of it as a moving train and our vision is the engine of that train. Our strategic plan is both an idea and a tool for measurement. It conveys a forceful momentum that is sensible, unstoppable, and implacable in its unambiguous direction. This plan is not an exercise in journalism. It is an exercise in careful, clear, creative, disciplined thought. It provides a critical premise for success that our faculty, staff, students, and constituents understand, can commit to, and can dramatize to others. I want our vision statement, our mission statement, and our entire strategic plan to be important, believable, distinctive, and measurable. I want them to be structured in such a way that every department and every individual at Western has a responsible role to play. I want them to be an integral part of one's performance evaluation. All campus units need to be linked and moving earnestly down the track in the same direction. Academic affairs, facilities, finance, information technology, admissions, marketing, development, student services, and athletes all need to be linked together as cars on this train. I also know that institutions and departments don't do anything. People do. Therefore, I want our plan to be a plan that is built on a clear sense of who is doing what and when. Our resources must be consumed in ways which can be evaluated. Otherwise, the plan is meaningless and little will likely be accomplished. Suffice it to say that I want all of us to think daringly and execute steadily and consistently. We will progress while institutions around us struggle. We may not solve every problem as timely as those directly involved might like, but, with the right combination of patience and persistence, we will solve most of them and this university will be among the best comprehensive universities in America.

Before leaving our strategic plan, let me mention one thing we are going to be addressing more this year. As we complete a five-year capital campaign and complete some construction projects, and perhaps reach a peak on our rate of enrollment growth, it will be important that we focus on an effective marketing plan over the next few years. For the past five years, much of our public communication has been the result of accomplishments and actions on our part. While that will certainly continue to be the case, we cannot assume that the dynamics that have been at work in recent years will continue without concentrated effort on our part to sustain this university as a priority in the public mind. The Tennessee lottery, which will offer a financial incentive for Tennessee students to remain in state rather than attend Western, comes on line in the coming year. For-profit colleges and universities are aggressively offering courses over the Internet and on-site, and they are aimed at the same students we recruit. The focus of the just completed capital campaign has passed. If we are not careful and thoughtful, we could begin to see a reversal of the trends on which we have become dependent in recent years. We will do our best to keep that from happening.

A remarkable year
At this point last August, I focused on our achievements over the last five years, and I talked about what we might expect to achieve in the coming academic year- the year that just ended six weeks ago. I can't resist taking a moment to recap with you what, in my opinion, was a remarkable year- most of it good, some of it sad, but nevertheless remarkable in the life of this or any institution. Reflect with me a minute on some of the things that will warrant a bit more than a footnote as the history of this university is written.

First, on June 30, we completed the university's first comprehensive capital campaign and, right off the bat, I'm going to be vague with you and refrain from announcing the final tallies of that campaign. Suffice it to say that Tom Hiles and his staff and cadre of volunteers handsomely passed the $90 million goal which was raised when the original $78 million goal was reached a year ago. We will celebrate the dollar totals on September 19 at our annual President's Circle gala. Let me focus with you here on some of the campaign outcomes and how they enhanced what we're about as a university: 27 new endowed professorships or chairs when we had none before the campaign began in 1998; $29 million in new endowed scholarships; a total endowment that now stands at some $56 million (it was $16 million when we started); and numerous operating accounts in our foundations which support what you do as faculty and staff. The people, places, and programs of this university have been and will forever be affected by the results of this capital campaign. Our future is more financially secure and our level of confidence in the private sector is stronger. Prior to 1998 we had little reason to salute private resources that will be so necessary in our future.

Secondly, our enrollment growth -Western continues to be the fastest growing university in Kentucky. I suspect that trend will apply again this fall. Dr. Hughes, Dr. Kahler, and our admissions staff tell me we'll end up somewhere in the low to mid 18,000 range this fall. Our enrollment growth is largely the reason why we ended up with a net $1.6 million gain in state appropriations for the current biennium, the best budget outcome among the eight universities, including those larger than Western. Our enrollment growth, however, remains largely unfunded with state appropriations. We are assessing our options as we approach the 2004 legislative session. If we get sufficient funding to encourage future growth, we may continue to grow but at a less aggressive rate. If we do not get state funding to support our growth, we will have identified those criteria on which we will become more definitive in our selection of incoming students and focus our limited resources on a more stable enrollment. We must identify our range of tolerance for growth and limited funding. We have decided to set a minimum ACT score of 18 and a high school GPA of 2.5 to be admitted as a baccalaureate degree-seeking student. We will further utilize our community college for those who do not meet these standards. We must remain accessible.

What a year it has been for campus construction. As we speak we are wrapping up six construction projects. Mass Media and Technology Hall will be almost finished this month - at least we're moving in. This one has been frustrating, but we're almost there. The parking lot along Creason Drive is almost finished. Bates-Runner and Barnes-Campbell halls are finished and, in fact, occupied. Diddle Arena will be finished next month. Phase I of the Downing University Center is nearly complete - a fast-track project which was initiated just a few months ago. When you get a moment in the next few weeks, check out the new Fresh Food Company in Downing University Center. It may give you a whole new take on campus dining options for faculty and staff. Minton Hall will be finished in December. The renovation of Poland Hall gets under way in January.

Another postscript on the recent past, Dick Kirchmeyer and his staff in Information Technology led a marvelous effort to replace our 12-year-old telephone system with a new state-of-the-art system which increases our capacity as a university community and enhances the increasingly important dependability of our phone system. We're getting a little fancy here. The old digital telephones are replaced. Now students in our residence halls can even receive wake up calls. Your office phones have some new capabilities which may require you to call our telecommunications office for consultations. Please do so. The new systems allow us to enhance cellular telephone access, receive fax messages directly to your voice mailbox, and receive faxes and voice mails directly from your computer. There will be several faculty and staff communications in the weeks ahead which will help you get up to speed on our new system.

This past year, when you consider our 3.7 percent salary increase, along with our increase to the university contribution to health insurance, and our market adjustment pools for faculty and staff, once again we had the highest rate of compensation increases among all the universities in our state - a trend in recent years in which I personally take great pride.

How about the national successes among several of our academic programs and numerous individual faculty and staff! Joe Survant was named poet laureate of Kentucky. Erika Brady was named as the outstanding faculty member in all of higher education in Kentucky. Terry Wilcutt was named the outstanding alumnus among our Kentucky colleges and universities. Once again, journalism and broadcasting, the College Heights Herald, and civil engineering earned national honors proving that we are capable of achieving national prominence across this campus. But how about our forensics team! It bears repeating. For the first time in the history of intercollegiate debate, one university won all three national championships and the international forensics association championship in the same year. Western Kentucky University swept all national and international honors and, of the 36 students in our forensics program, only two were seniors. Of all the successes this university has enjoyed, academically and athletically, over the years, this, in my opinion, tops them all. It sets a standard for all of us for many years to come. Our athletics program had a pretty good year as well with six conference championships, a conference all-sports trophy, a national I-AA football championship, and nearly half of our student athletes earned a 3.0 grade point average or better.

And what can I say about your work in sponsored research except congratulations and keep it going. With Phil Myers and his staff orchestrating your efforts, you, the faculty and staff submitted 328 proposals totaling nearly $70 million in proposed sponsored support. Of those, 284 awards were successful. You brought in $29,786,235 in new grants and contracts this past year. Folks, I'm impressed. This is a statistical measure in which we are leading our benchmarks and creating considerable distance from most comprehensive universities. That's what I'm talking about when I say it's time we started expressing our resolve to sustain our position as the best comprehensive university in Kentucky and among the best in the nation.

As comprehensive universities go, we have built a remarkable track record in private fund raising, in sponsored support, in national academic achievement, in national success for our students, and in athletics. Let's all give each other and this university a round of applause for one heck of a year. I say thank you and congratulations!

As we applaud our success, let me encourage all of us to focus on the real significance of success—the value it brings to people. Growing research support, growing enrollment, growing private support, physical plant improvements, championships, new academic programs, national awards are important measures of progress, but these are not of optimum impact unless they significantly affect people. It is not the trappings of success that motivate us, rather the difference it makes in the lives of people in and near this university family: professorships and scholarships for people; diversity in growth; economic development, jobs, and solved problems; leadership and character building. These are the outcomes that our success should ensure.

The significance of this past year, however, is not only defined by achievements and celebration. We lost 15 faculty, staff, and students this past year. There were automobile accidents, there was illness, there were suicides - one among our students, one among our faculty, and one among our staff - and there was a homicide in one of our residence halls. Perhaps like never before, this university family needed the compassion, the sympathy, and the embracement that only a family can provide. As we pass 20,000 students and employees in this university community, it is inevitable that we will experience the range of emotions -exhilaration of achievement that the talent among us is sure to bring, and the pain of loss that the realities of life and death are sure to bring. As busy and complex as our lives have become, let us never fail to take the time to be a family and to embrace those in need among us.

As we ended the fiscal year, you may have read about a campus safety task force which I appointed in the aftermath of the homicide that occurred in Poland Hall. The tragic murder of one of our students last spring sent shock waves through this campus. Within nine days, however, a multi-agency investigative team headed by Chief Robert Deane and the WKU Police Department, identified and apprehended two suspects. The commonwealth attorney's office is pursuing their prosecution. Let us not let that tragic death fail to affect our behavior. I'm going to make a special point to prevail upon all of our students, particularly our new freshmen, that they must make good decisions, that they look after each other, and be cognizant of the dangers that exist in our society when you get away from our campus and the dangers of bringing undesirable elements in our society on to our campus. The campus safety task force, made up mostly of parents, students, the bowling green police chief and assistant fire department chief, members of our housing and residence life staff, and other members of our campus community, made important recommendations. We will heed these recommendations while we await the outcome of the judicial process.

I want to personally thank members of this task force, directed by Mike Littell, chair of our WKU Parents Council, for their work in both affirming things we are doing well and suggesting ways that we might be even more diligent in ensuring that we have the safest possible environment for faculty, staff, and students. Their findings can be found on our website or copies are available through the University Relations office.

Let us use the events of this past year, the pleasant and the difficult, to dedicate ourselves to the new academic year which begins this week.

Diversity, affirmative action, and accessibility
We must continue to enhance our workforce diversity. I am going to track with a new employment diversity report, at least a new report for my attention, which I have asked Huda Melky to provide on a quarterly basis. We will track every appointment across our administrative and academic units, and track the total jobs filled by males, females, and minorities. While we have made diversity progress in recent years, I want to ensure that we are creating a diverse and talented workforce, that, at every opportunity, we seek to upgrade our talent and diversify to the extent possible. For those of you who may not be aware, I made the subtle move this past year of having the office of equal opportunity and compliance report directly to me. I meet with Huda Melky now on a regular basis to track our progress in these important matters.

We all read much over the summer about the Supreme Court decision on affirmative action in response to the University of Michigan cases. In all of my reading in this regard, I tried to focus on the degree to which this decision affected Western and what we are about in this university community. Clearly, diversity is a priority on this campus. I've made my position quite clear for the past six years. We must grow our African American and international student populations in a progressive and consistent manner. We must do so to ensure a rich experience for our students and for ourselves, and we must do so in order to be responsible producers of talent for business, industry, and public sector jobs. Rod Gillum, vice president for corporate relations with General Motors, succinctly clarifies the automakers position that "diversity of background, thought, and experience is essential to the educational process. Efforts by universities to create a diverse student body from which corporations can recruit should be supported." Clearly, the university is the key to providing a diverse workforce, particularly at the mid-management and senior levels. And now the courts have affirmed that recruitment at colleges and universities cannot be about quotas and must be about the intent to diversify.

This is of interest to us all, but it really has little impact on Western. The court's decision has a far greater impact on the 10 percent or so of American colleges and universities which engage in highly-selected admissions practice. The reality is affirmative action, as defined as access and opportunity, is practiced throughout most of American higher education with little or no regard to either historic or recent court actions because they simply were not relevant at most colleges. The contention that the outcome of the Michigan case would dramatically affect the face of higher education overlooks the historic route to opportunity that most colleges, colleges like Western, have long provided. Western's African American student population has increased from approximately 5% to approximately 10% of our student body since our strategic plan was initiated in 1998, and our international student population has grown from approximately 200 to 500 over the same period of time. We're doing a good job of diversifying our student body, and we must continue. We are doing so with solid recruiting practices aimed at inner-city schools in Louisville, Nashville, Memphis, St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Cincinnati. Word-of-mouth recruitment in the international community is paying off as well.

Clarity for me was achieved in a conversation I had with Dr. Kermit L. Hall, president of Utah State University. Utah State is one of the new member institutions in our Sun Belt athletic conference. One of the values of an athletic conference is the opportunity to interact with peer institutions on matters which go way beyond athletic competition. Such was the case when I spent some time with Kermit at the Sun Belt conference spring meetings last may. Kermit further clarified the perspective we shared in a point-of-view article he wrote in June 20 Chronicle of Higher Education. Some points Kermit made that are pertinent to our work at Western include his acknowledgement that "we do not now and never will have to depend alone on a hand full of highly selective institutions to produce our future leaders."

Western Kentucky has historically operated with an open admissions policy. We may be in the process of becoming more modestly selective over the next few years but that will be driven by financial variables and will not affect our recruitment of a diverse student population. Gene Matthews of the Washington Post wrote that "less selective colleges often do a better job than highly selective institutions in preparing less confident students for life. The academic competition tends to be friendlier and the teaching is better." Mr. Matthews' assertion describes our environment at Western well.

It is ironic to me that at the same time that the Supreme Court has pondered the fate of race-based admissions policies, budget shortfalls have prompted many states to slash spending on financial aid forcing institutions to raise tuition and fees to make ends meet and have any hope of sustaining academic quality. The single greatest barrier to access to higher education for most students, but particularly for minority students, is not admissions policy, rather it is the financial constraints which are forcing many public institutions—selective or not—to limit unfunded enrollment growth. For those of us in public higher education, most of the resources needed to educate a student are going to have to continue to come principally from the state. Most states, however, are now, in growing numbers, abandoning the social contract they forged with higher education—a contract which suggests that colleges keep tuition at a level that encourages access, and in return the state provides subsidies to the campus and financial aid to students. But tough economic times are forcing policy choices that invariably work against our colleges and universities. The single most important action that federal and state governments can take is to provide funding to ensure both access and quality and to ensure sufficient financial aid for students from low and moderate-income families. Better financial support for students in need and for our faculty, who are working each day to provide the educational opportunities for our students, is what will make the difference on this and most other public campuses.

Budget reality
Economic reality in Kentucky is not encouraging for this year and perhaps the next two years. I was in budget hearings in Frankfort last week. We must plan on a budget cut before this fiscal year is over. We are to fight like never before to hold onto what we have for next year. The political dynamics in Kentucky do not bode well for new revenues. The cost - and value - of a Western education is going to increase this year. We will have no other choice. I have told Ann Mead, chief financial officer, to once again freeze new unbudgeted revenue from enrollment growth this fall and hold in reserve for an anticipated state budget cut. I also alerted the Board of Regents last Friday that we are at a crossroad with academic quality. Unfunded enrollment growth has cost us dearly. We have not been able to fill the faculty positions needed to keep pace with our growth. Our faculty-student ratio has grown too high. Departmental operating budgets have not grown in years.

We have been creative in finding ways to build new buildings and renovate residence halls and other deteriorated buildings. I believe everyone here knows that we cannot use money restricted by the state or a donor for these purposes to invest in academic quality. But it is academics' turn. I will be aggressive this year with the board to find a way to invest in academic quality and student success. I promised the board I would present a plan by mid-fall.

Accreditation
As most of you know, Western is moving toward a Southern Association of Colleges and Schools accreditation and reaffirmation process that will culminate in 2005. This is a significant and consuming process in the life of any university. It is a process we will take seriously and utilize to improve the quality of academic and student life experience throughout the campus. The Western experience in many ways has subtle and not so subtle differences when compared with the experience to be gained on many other campuses. The goal of the SACS team led by Retta Poe and Dennis George has thus far been to zero in on the theme that we will follow in our accreditation process and use that theme as a way to ensure that the Western experience is indeed as rich and as meaningful for our students as we can make it. Our campus accreditation team has selected the theme of "engaging students for success in a global society." In short, it will be our intent over the next few years to incorporate into our curriculum formal and informal ways in which our students understand the significance of community engagement and social responsibility. I applaud this initiative. It is not the intent of those leading the effort to add to anyone's workload; rather it is to try to raise consciousness of broader educational responsibilities.

Albert Schweitzer, the German philosopher and physician, once said "you must give some time to your fellow man even if it is a little thing. Do something for others, something for which you will get no pay but the privilege of doing it." There has been a ground swell of interest in returning higher education to its broader public mission, which includes preparation of students for responsible citizenship. Most campuses, however, have focused their efforts on particular programs or activities that may not affect the majority of undergraduates. Institutions, heretofore, have typically not centrally coordinated efforts in this regard.

We should all be concerned with the development of the person as an accountable individual and an engaged participant in our society at the local, state, national, and global levels. Responsibility includes viewing oneself as a member of a shared, social structure. Virtues such as honesty, trustworthiness, fairness, and respect contribute to the development of personal integrity. Some institutions seek to enhance a sense of social concern among the students through course work that focuses on important social or moral issues while others use programs of community service and service learning.

Our students need to understand how a community operates, the problems it faces, the richness of diversity, and be willing to commit time and energy to enhance community life and work collectively to resolve community concerns. Colleges and universities should be trying to promote civic responsibility through both curricular and co-curricular programs. Because civic responsibility is inescapably threaded with moral values, higher education must aspire to foster both moral and civic maturity and must create educational links between them.

Tom Ehrlich, former president of Indiana University and a senior scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, suggests the core of this issue: "Civic engagement means working to make a difference in the civic life of our community and developing a combination of knowledge, skills, values, and motivation to make that difference. It means promoting the quality of life in the community in both political and non-political themes." Dr. Ehrlich's contention is that "universities should incorporate civic virtues into its teaching and seek to become good models of an engaged campus." But it is a difficult challenge.

The development of students' moral and civic responsibilities will be more difficult today than ever before. A high percentage of our students are commuter students. Many do not come to this campus directly from high school. Many do not view themselves as members of a community of learners, rather, as consumers who seek to get what they want as rapidly, as easily, and as cheaply as possible. At the same time, many of our undergraduate courses are taught by adjunct faculty who often find it difficult to develop relationships with their students or influence them outside the classroom. This is why it is so important that you as faculty and staff view yourselves as members of this academic community, and that your loyalties to the mission and goals of this university become as important as the strong loyalties you feel to your discipline.

It is not my intention here today to simplify or sound philosophical or esoteric. I do, however, seek these virtues in our students and graduates. I am asking Provost Burch and vice president Tice and our deans to work closely with our accreditation committee to use the SACS affirmation process as a means to incorporate these values into the Western experience. It is my hope that our extracurricular programs and our residence hall life include a rich blend of moral and civic responsibility in each student's life. These concepts are in the process of becoming explicit campus goals.

Two specific projects that you will be hearing more about include the American Democracy Project which is being advanced by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, of which Western is an active member, and the American Humanics Program which we are initiating on our campus.

The American Democracy Project is a multi-campus initiative that seeks to create an intellectual and experiential understanding of civic engagement in the United States in the 21st century. It is aimed at undergraduates, enrolled in more than 430 AASCU institutions which represent more than 1.3 million students. The project, which includes 146 participating institutions, is in response to decreasing rates of participation in civic life in America, in voting, in advocacy, in volunteerism in local associations, and in other forms of civic engagement that are necessary for the vitality of our democracy.

The goals, therefore, of the American Democracy Project are to increase the number of undergraduate students who understand and are committed to engaging in meaningful civic actions and to focus on the civic value of the college experience. This will require us to examine our academic programs, our extracurricular programs, and our institutional culture. It will cause us to further define the Western experience. Specifically, the American Democracy Project seeks to create a national conversation among campuses about the theory and practice of civic engagement; to develop institutional commitment in addressing our core institutional mission and purpose and focusing on civic engagement as a learning outcome for undergraduates; to initiate new projects, courses, teaching strategies, extracurricular programs, and other programs; and to measure the civic engagement outcomes of undergraduates on participating campuses.

This project is being supported by a partnership with the New York Times. We will use its resources to link geographically distant campuses together in a national conversation. I am pleased to say that Barbara Burch is among 18 academic officers across the nation who have been involved in developing the American Democracy Project.

The second step we are in the process of taking involves a decision to become part of the American Humanics Program. Before John Bonaguro began his duties as the dean of our new College of Health and Human Services, I asked him to attend a meeting this summer with universities currently engaged in the American Humanics Program. American humanics is a certification program which provides credentialing for students who seek to work in the not-for-profit sector. Western students from numerous disciplines will be able to take a series of courses leading to American humanics certification during their undergraduate careers. The program will prepare them for leadership responsibilities with such agencies as the united Way, The Peace Corps, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, and any number of other not-for-profit organizations. We will be one of only two universities in Kentucky to offer such certification. Dr. Bonaguro will lead the initiation of this program on our campus over the coming year and its initiation here will be simultaneous with our participation in the American Democracy Project and our SACS reaffirmation process.

Centennial
It is not too early to begin thinking about our centennial celebration. Founded in 1906, Western will celebrate 100 years of service to the state and nation in the spring of 2006. I have asked Dean David Lee to chair a centennial committee with the specific charge that we plan a centennial that properly reflects the academy and the protocols and pageantry unique to higher education in our society. We certainly want to reflect on our rich history, our deep-seated spirit, and the character which defines the Western experience, but we want to do so in a manner consistent and fitting an academic community - a community of scholars and learners. It is my hope that we will raise public awareness of the significance of this university in the life of this state. You'll be hearing more from Dean Lee' committee as plans take shape over the next couple of years.

In closing, please allow me to take a moment to reiterate to you the commitment I made to our Board of Regents last fall. As I completed five years in this job, I found myself thinking that I had just begun and that five years had passed quickly. I found myself energized by both our achievements and by the opportunities and challenges which confront us. Julie and I both know that it is rare to have the opportunity to serve our alma mater in such a meaningful way. Not many educators get the chance to be president of their own university. I am fortunate. Because this is my alma mater, I am exceedingly passionate about our collective work to improve the quality of life on this campus, the value of the Western degree, and our capacity to achieve national prominence throughout our academic, administrative, and athletics programs. It is my intention to serve in this capacity for many years to come. I have every intention of achieving the board's request to serve through 2012. I hope that as many of you as possible, whether you're new to campus or nearing retirement, share this pursuit of a transformation with me. I will do everything in my power to make it as richly a rewarding experience as I possibly can. I want everyone, whether they are affiliated with Western or not, to swell with pride when they contemplate the widespread impact of the faculty, staff, students, and alumni who make up this university family.

I read a recent chamber of commerce publication that talked about the corporate DNA. It described the underlying philosophical genetics developed over time which define a company. Some organizations, like people, have DNA composition of genetic strength and value. If one could extract corporate DNA, then one could identify what corporation a person is part of. I find myself applying that analogy to a college or university. We have campus DNA. At Western, our campus DNA has been genetically strengthened for 97 years. We are good. We have a rare spirit. But, like people with good genetics, we can let it lie dormant. We can let it fade and never reach its potential or we can draw on it to achieve our full potential. The heart of our campus DNA is the intellectual environment of our classrooms. Everything that we as administration and staff do should be geared toward ensuring that we have the best possible intellectual environment in our classrooms, laboratories, and libraries. All the best administrative practices, fund-raising results, student recruitment successes, residence hall programming, dining and parking improvements, athletic achievements, technology innovations, and the like, mean little unless our students are led to make personal discoveries, whenever possible in the midst of other students, and our students learn to trust their developing instincts as they learn the differences between information, knowledge, and wisdom. It is our collective jobs, particularly the job of our faculty in this information age, to create knowledge and, within those in whom we instill knowledge, we create wisdom.

I close with a story about the asian farmer who sold his farm to scrape up enough money to search for diamonds and great wealth. His search was futile and he soon ran out of money and eventually died a homeless pauper. The fellow who bought his farm one day discovered a diamond in a stream on the farm, started digging, and found what became one of the world's largest diamond mines.

Our wealth is right here. We have the intellectual strength, the talent, the values, and a distinguished history to achieve so much as a university community. We have great wealth in the minds and hearts of the people in this university family and in the physical attributes across this campus. The spirit does indeed make the master. We have diamonds to polish and, through each of you, great intellectual wealth to share. I'm proud to be working alongside you. Let's have a terrific year. Thank you.